An engrossing but lengthy religious tale about a warrior’s mission.
In this debut novel, a traveler arrives in Wales in the years following Jesus’ Crucifixion, calling on a battle-hardened warlord to aid in spreading Christianity.
Caradog ap Bran is a Welsh warrior from Caerlech—modern-day Cardiff—waging a guerrilla war against the invading Roman soldiers who murdered his family. Through the violence appears “the Messenger,” a man called Joseph of Arimathea, who has journeyed from Judea to tell of the recent Crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection, and further spread his new gospel. But Joseph’s Messiah has given him another task as well, to not just convert those who glorify lesser gods, but to specifically find Caradog, who has been prophesized to one day stand before the Romans on their own ground and preach directly to his enemies. At first unconvinced, Caradog encounters yet another man, a Roman centurion he has captured, who was present at the Crucifixion, and has been sent by Jesus to assist the warrior after Joseph has departed. But enemies to their holy purpose abound, not just the Romans, who still wish to take over Wales and have begun to realize what they stirred up in Judea, but also the aged wizard Merlon and the alluring enchantress Rhewbina, mystically powered agents of the Welsh’s serpentine god Ocelus. Sweeting’s absorbing tale deftly pulls information from historical and biblical records, presuming Joseph of Arimathea was the first to bring early Christianity to Wales. The novel is meticulously detailed, bringing to life the rustic British countryside, the opulence of Roman fortifications and armor, and the furs and functionality of the Welsh villages, while recounting the battle tactics and politics of both sides. The book suffers from its length (nearly 400 pages), regularly repeating information unnecessarily, a problem that could be easily solved by sharper editing. The story is told in a modern style, which is occasionally distracting when using phrases like “alarm bells sounded” and words like “curveball,” among others, despite the period. The first entry in a series, the book ends with numerous cliffhangers, from threats on Joseph’s life to Caradog’s uncertainty on his path, effectively setting the stage for an epic.
An engrossing but lengthy religious tale about a warrior’s mission.Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-8665-1
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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